If Robin Were A Robin
by Dragonfire-wolfgirl
Summary: Cadmus is back in business and in a mood for revenge against a certain teenage superhero team, and using the team as some of the test subjects for project Bestia seems like the perfect way to get their point across to the league, that no one messes with the light. Warning: team turned into animals.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

**Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN YOUNG JUSTICE! If I did, I would probably ruin it and I would be the only person who watched it anymore and Cartoon Network would certainly fire me after my 1****st**** day of working there.**

**Author's Note: this is my first fan fiction, like ever. So please don't make the reviews too harsh. Also, this team is pre-zattana, so it won't include her or rocket.**

…**On with the story!**

"_Is the prototype ready yet?"_

"_It's nearly done sir, just a few more minutes of tinkering and Project Bestia will be ready for activation."_

"_And the false distress calls?"_

"_It was intercepted by The League; their team of sidekicks will arrive within the hour."_

"_Perfect."_

56 minutes and 33 seconds later…

**Robin's POV.**

How did everything go so wrong so fast?

I mean, the team has gotten into terrible situations loads of times before, but this one definitely took the 'oh, we really screwed it up this time' cake.

The assignment was simple enough: find the hidden military compound in the forest, sneak in, free the captured Star Labs Scientists, and find out if it had anything to do Cadmus, as Batman had suspected. Then again, most of the 'simple' missions we had gone on hadn't ended up being so easy.

If I had to blame someone for this mess , I guess it would be Wally, seeing as falling face-first into the motion sensors didn't really fit in Batman's guidelines of 'extremely covert' and 'do not under **any** circumstances be seen'.

But then again, Wally was Wally. In his defense, it was dark, and he never saw the stairs. Also, to be honest, we had all been making mistakes since we arrived in La Pampa, Argentina.

**Flashback**

"_Everyone put your camouflage on", said Megan, slowly landing the bio ship in a small Jungle clearing._

"_Sure thing Green Cheeks" Wally said._

_Artemis and I rolled our eyes in sync, kid flash would flirt with Megan any chance he got, along with the constant pleas for her to go out with him, even though the Speedster got turned down every time._

"_Yes" _

"_Yes"_

"_Yea"_

"_GRUNT" (Superboy language for yes)_

" _We must remember what Batman said team," Aqualad said as he stood up from his seat in the bio ship, "this is a very high stakes mission, and we must not confront enemies unless absolutely necessary."_

"_Well if it is Cadmus abducting those scientists," Said Superboy, standing up from his seat to face him, "then no stupid guidelines are going to stop me from punching Blockbuster , Guardian, and whoever else is behind this."_

_Aqualad sighed, acknowledging that when Superboy wanted to punch something, there was almost no one, in this world or otherwise, who could stop him._

"_Alright, let's go", Aqualad said, stepping out of the opened hatch and into the cool night air._

_One at a time we stepped out and followed our leader into the moonlit jungle, where with luck we would find the Cadmus military compound and the 53 scientists who had been brutally kidnapped earlier that week._

**End of Flashback**

Finding the compound was relatively easy, seeing as not many of the farmers in the area didn't own many military cars, helicopters, and armed guards. Once we had entered the compound, through a hole superboy had punched in the barbed wire fence, (which remarkably didn't wake up the two guards sleeping on chairs not 30 yards away) we found a good hiding spot behind an old truck and hooked up to the mind link.

We obeyed Aqualad's orders and broke up into teams of 2, and as usual, Wally and Artemis complained about being paired up, but they shut up when Aqualad started telling us the plan.

**Another Flashback!**

"_Artemis, Kid Flash, stop bickering! You know that I only put you two together because each group should have at least one person who is good at stealth." Aqualad said._

"_Hey, I'm not that bad at stealth, and why did you have to put me with her! Why can't I be with Megan?" Kid Flash complained._

"_Maybe because all you would do is stare at her and flirt?" I suggested._

"_Dude! I wouldn't do that, at least not the whole time."_

"_Rob's right Baywatch, you wouldn't get anything done." said Artemis smugly._

"_Don't call me that! And who asked you anyway Blondi-"_

"_Will you two please stop fighting and listen to the plan!" Aqualad interrupted, diffusing the situation before there was any bloodshed, most likely the Speedster's._

_They both shut up, but still glared daggers at each other._

"_Alright, here's the plan," Aqualad began, "Each team will be responsible for exploring one part of the compound. Miss Martian and Superboy , you will be exploring the trucks that they are un loading cargo from, "Aqualad pointed, "Kid Flash and Artemis, you two will be going into that building to your left, and no fighting alright?" They both nodded reluctantly. "Robin and I will be heading to the building complex in front of us. If you find anything, contact the rest of us on the mind link. Good luck, and remember, Covert!"_

_We all nodded and scanned the area for guards before dashing to our respective areas. At that moment I felt a chill down my spine like someone was watching us, I stopped and scanned the area once more. _

_Nothing, not even any security cameras, either the people in charge of this were complete idiots, or this was a huge trap. I seriously hoped it was the former not the latter._

_I guess that some of Batman's paranoia must have finally rubbed off on me, I decided, because I knew from experience that sometimes criminals were just plain dumb….then again quite a few of our earlier missions had included traps. I pushed the bad thoughts out of my head and ran the rest of the way to the complex._

_My amazing hacking skills easily got us through the security bypass and we proceeded down the hall into the biggest part of the complex. As we continued we checked each room we came upon, all of them were empty._

"_Stop, someone is coming." Aqualad suddenly said._

_We immediately went to the last door we checked and ducked inside. The sound of two pairs of footsteps echoed down the hall Kaldur and I had occupied seconds before._

_Upon entering the room, I noticed something I hadn't before, when we were just focused on finding out whether there was anyone inside or not. I noticed the smell of an animal…. like what a dog smells like after you give it a bath._

_Once the footsteps had passed, I turned to Kaldur and asked, "Do you smell that?"_

_He nodded, "there did not appear to be animals in this room when we first checked it."_

_I moved into the center of the room and looked around more carefully. We were in a large room that was mostly empty, except for a small table and what appeared to be a pile of abandoned animal cages filled with canisters of dog food. I made my way to the cages and inspected them, wondering aloud, "Since when do mad scientists keep puppies?"_

"_Woof Woof"_

"_There do not appear to be animals in the cages." said Aqualad, coming up from behind me._

"_So either Cadmus invented invisible dogs, or there's something behind these cages." I said, removing the first few and setting them on the ground, revealing the outline of a door that had been previously obscured by the boxes._

"_Woof Woof" barked the presumed dog behind the door._

_Aqualad cleared the rest of the cages away and opened the door, water bearers at the ready in case of an attack._

_As soon as we entered the room there was pandemonium, different species of animal calling out in alarm. We had thought there would just be the one barking dog, but found at least 20 caged animals in the room, varieties of birds, reptiles, mammals, and even 1 fish._

_The room we were in was smaller than the last one, and there was a table against the wall that had a row of computers on it. I immediately went to the computers and started hacking; it took only 15 seconds to break through the firewall._

"_Hey Kaldur, come check this out." I said as I pulled up a file titled 'Project Bestia'_

"_It's written in code, I can't translate most of it, but it has something to do with genetic mutation and animal DNA."_

"_We must report this to the rest of the team," said Aqualad, calling Miss Martian on the mind link._

'_Kaldur, Robin, did you find anything.'_

'_Indeed we did. In one of the rooms we checked, we found quite a few animals and Robin found a file that had something to do with animal DNA. Did you and Superboy find anything interesting in the cargo crates you investigated? '_

'_Yes! All the crates were filled with vials that seemed to have some kind of blue liquid, I was meaning to ask kid flash about them right before you called.'_

'_Why would you ask Kid Idiot about that?' said Artemis, 'I don't think he'll have a better understanding of this than any of us.'_

'_Just for your information Arty, I'm actually a science prodigy.'_

'_Yeah right Flash Boy, and I'm a rocket scientist'_

'_Actually Artemis, everything kid flash said was true.'_

'_Wait, for real?!'_

'_For real Arty, how else do ya think I got my powers, I was the only person who was smart enough to recreate that lab accident that gave my uncle HIS powers.'_

'_Back to the subject,' said Aqualad, 'Artemis and Kidflash, what did you find?_

'_Well , it's really weird, but we found a few scientists, probably some of the kidnapped ones studying all these caged animals, probably like the ones you and Robin saw earlier, but -' said Artemis._

'_Well actually there's one more thing, a really big thing.' added Kid Flash, ' There was this one big room the scientists kept on talking about, and something about a weapon. We found a door that we think leads to it, but we couldn't get in seeing as my hacking skills aren't as good as a certain Boy Wonder's.'_

'_Would we be able to get in?'_

'_Yeah, security's not tight at all.'_

'_The rest of the team will rendezvous with you at your co-ordinates soon.' finished Aqualad, turning to me and signaling that we should leave._

_It didn't take long to get to the building where the rest of the team was waiting. Wally and Artemis were right, security was next to nothing, and while every nerve in my body was screaming __**TRAP**__ at me, I told my senses to shut up. Even when I felt there was a 99.9% chance of this being a trap, I continued on, knowing full well that giving up on the mission just because of a hunch wouldn't sit so well with Batman._

_We met up with the rest of the team in an abandoned and dark hallway. "It's just down this hallway" said kid flash, breaking the icy silence and pointing._

"_Shhhhhh!" said Artemis glaring._

"_Relax Arty, no one can hear us. Come on." He said turning to look at us and then racing down the hall way, up until he found the stairs._

"_Wahhhh!" he said crashing down the stairs and landing at the bottom in a heap._

_Stairs: 1 KF: 0._

_We ran to help him, and I noticed a thin red line running just above his head that he had somehow missed while falling._

"_KF, stay completely still, don't move your head!", I whisper-shouted._

_But, of course he did, the top of his head touching the red line. It vanished and a low beeping started._

"_Great job Kid Doofus, you set off the motion sensors!" I yelled at him, now having no reason to be quiet. We helped him up while I internally cursed myself for not hacking the motion sensors the minute we entered the building._

_We were about to turn tail and run, but just then a scream echoed through the hallway, coming from the direction of the room we were going to enter._

_We all looked at Kaldur and he nodded, we had to put the needs of other's before our own. That would be the main rule in hero's guidebook, if there ever was one._

_It took me only 20 seconds flat to get us inside, but the second we rushed through the door, I wished we hadn't. It was dark in the room when we went inside; we never saw the ambush till it was too late._

_The lights turned on. We were surrounded._

**End of Flashback!**

And that's how we got into this wonderful situation: surrounded by over fifty men, armed to the teeth with guns, knives, and lots of other things that would probably hurt like heck if you got hit by them.

I hated myself, I practically knew without a doubt that it would be a trap, yet I neglected to tell my teammates and now there was a high chance of none of us getting out of this alive. I mean seriously, almost no security cameras and easy to hack into systems, anyone with half a brain could figure out that this was a trap. Yet I, the protégé of the world's greatest detective, had shrugged off the coincidences and walked into a trap, today was definitely not a good day for me.

"You're 6 minutes early kidos." said a creepy voice as the guards to the right of me parted and a figure stepped through, Lex Luthor.

This is definitely not good, If the guards haven't tried to kill us yet, and Luthor is here in person, that means that they want us alive for whatever is going to happen next. I couldn't decide if I liked that or not.

"I hoped that we would have had more time to test the vapor version, but it seems we'll just have to hope for the best."

"What are you talking about, and what did you do with the scientists you kidnapped?" asked Kid Flash getting into a fighting stance with the rest of us.

"Well Kid Flash, they're right here." He said motioning to the guards who stepped aside, revealing stack upon stack of cages full of sleeping animals.

"Dude, I think you need to get your eyes checked, because those are just animals."

Luther just grinned. I had a terrible suspicion as to what he meant, but I hoped I was wrong and said nothing.

The guards moved their weapons and aimed them at us. "Drop it!" Luthor shouted. A large metal box fell from the ceiling and surrounded us.

"Ha," Super Boy shouted, "you really think that a stupid box is going to keep me from kicking your-"

He punched the wall, not noticing the faint green glow emanating from it, and immediately collapsed.

Kryptonite, the thing must have been laced with it. We tried to help Superboy up, but he didn't have the strength to stand.

"Uh, guys," Artemis said, pointing upward, "I'm just gonna go out on a limb here and say that's not good."

Vents at the top of the box had opened and now a thick blue vapor was flowing into the room. "Don't breathe it!" I shouted, fearing joker gas, fear gas, or worse. We held our breath as long as we could, but one by one, we succumbed to the need for oxygen, breathed in, and immediately collapsed.

I was the last to go down, holding out for at least 3 minutes, once the black spots dancing through my vision became too much to bear, I breathed. I collapsed to the floor, fighting to keep my eyes open, watching as my teammates appeared to change shape, my brain must be hallucinating, at least I hoped it was.

But soon I could fight it no more and let the darkness consume me.

**6-7 hrs later**

Uggh, my head was killing me. I concentrated and tried to rope in all the random thoughts bouncing around my head.

I remembered Batman assigning a mission, the team exploring the military compound, finding the animals, walking into the trap, and the team and I collapsing, thanks to some weird chemicals or something.

The Team!? What happened after we collapsed? I struggled to open my eyes, then focused.

I was met with the image of cell bars. No, not cell bars, cage bars! I was in a cage?

I tried to push myself up with my arms, only to collapse again.

What? Why couldn't I lift mysel-

I stopped and stared down at my hands in horror - or what used to be my hands.

"Oh this is **definitely** not good." I said, only to have it come out a strangled,

"Chirp!"


	2. Wally the Cheeta

**Chapter 2**

**Disclaimer: Hey, guess what? I DO own Young Justice! You all thought I was just some obsessed girl, but NO I'm Greg Weisman! My Mom: "Honey… you aren't Greg Weisman." Dang it! I really thought I was that time, so NO it appears I do not own Young Justice.**

**Author's note: OMG! WoW, I'm kind of shocked people viewed, favorited, followed and reviewed my very first story, thank ALL of you soo much! I'm so glad that at least some people took the time to read my story; I'm super happy right now! P.S for anyone who wondered, 'Bestia' is Latin for beast or animal.**

**Also I will try to update every few days, but these things take time, so please review!**

**Ok, enough with the dilly dallying, on with the story!**

**Robin's POV.**

This cannot be happening.

I must be hallucinating or something, yeah, that gas we breathed in could have been hallucinogenic, so what I'm seeing might just be an illusion. Then again I felt awake, and the pain I had just felt didn't feel that fake either. And if it had been hallucinogenics, my vision would have been swimming, like it was in my last encounter with the Scarecrow.

So that meant…..this was real?

That meant that the things I had extended in front of me, thinking they were my regular arms, WERE really wings.

Yep, this was definitely NOT good in any way imaginable.

Then something snapped into place in my brain, if I really was turned into an animal, which meant Luthor **wasn't **lying when he'd said that all those animals really **were** the scientists. Luthor must have forced them to make the serum or improve it, and then used them as literal guinea pigs for this Project 'Bestia'.

Now it all made sense, the animals in cages, the files about animal DNA, and all of the vials of serum that the team found. All the pieces of the puzzle suddenly fit together, all but the question of why.

I knew Cadmus hates the Team, since the moment it was formed, but the reason for them going through all this trouble just to capture the team and use us as test subjects.

Wait, the rest of the team, what happened to them, were they turned into animals too?

After some struggle, I stood up and looked around at my surroundings, where exactly was I?

It was a little dark, most likely the result of a blanket or something being draped over the cage.** My** cage.

That last part still terrified me, being turned into some sort of bird, and then being shoved into what I assumed was a bird cage. I would have laughed at my predicament if I wasn't so terrified.

I sensed movement outside of my cage, and suddenly the blanket was lifted and a blinding light shot streaming in.

A shadow soon blocked most of the light, a shadow the shape of a human, most likely one of the guards from the earlier ambush.

"Wake up Bird Boy," said a slightly disturbing gruff voice, "well, it's actually just Bird now, isn't it" the man laughed and shook the cage, sending me sprawling to the floor yet again.

Now that the black spots obscuring my vision were gone, I could focus now on the world around me. The man was tall, although I probably saw him as at least 10 times his normal height. I was in a small dank dusty room filled mostly with boxes like the ones on the cargo trucks.

I watched as the man picked up the cage via a handle on the top, walked across the room, and out the door.

It was early morning outside and a chilly breeze blew.

Wait, I recognized where we were, we had just walked out of the building Aqualad and I had first investigated, it seemed like all of that had happened days ago not a couple hours ago. At least I thought it was only a couple hours ago, for all I knew it very well **could **have taken place days ago. My head's still super foggy from the whole ordeal.

At least we had not left the compound yet; if we had, the league might never find us, seeing as the last thing they'd ever expect would be their sidekicks being turned into animals by Lex Luthor.

And then I saw where we were going, straight to the cargo trucks. So much for being saved by The League…

Once we reached one of the trucks, the man carrying my cage lifted the tarp on the back, roughly shoved my cage inside, and fastened the tarp down once more. Great, in the dark again, and since I didn't have opposable thumbs any more, there was a very small chance of me being able to untie the tarp and escape, even if I somehow managed to get out of this stupid cage.

After a minute or two, the truck started, by then my vision had adjusted to the darkness of the truck and I noticed some other cages surrounding me, I knew that there were at least 3 of them, but a pile of what I assumed were cargo boxes next to me limited my field of vision.

"Hello?" I asked loudly, though I came out as yet another "Chirp?"

A series of growls and feline noises came from the cage 5 feet to the left of mine. But the weird thing about the growls was that I **understood **them. It was almost as If there were two voices speaking at the same time, one making animal noises, and one speaking in English, saying "But Aunt Iris, I don't wanna get up."

"KF?"

"Rob, what's going on?" he asked drowsily and tried to locate my voice.

For a split second the tarp of the truck flapped slightly open, illuminating the inside of the truck, and I saw what was lying in the cage that Wally's voice had come from. It was a cheetah , how Ironic.

"Rob, you're -a…., a Robin, like - a real one!" he exclaimed, his cat eyes glowing in the creepily in the dark.

"Yeah, I know. Also not to freak you out or anything, but Wally, you're a cheetah."

"Yeah right, like I'm actually a cheet – What ?!"

I guess that Wally had just put the puzzle pieces together, like I had just a couple minutes ago.

"Sooo, is this really happening, or is it all a dream?" Wally tentatively asked.

"Yep, it's really happening." I answered, though I was still a bit unsure about that myself.

"Do you know where the rest of the team is?"

"Not exactly, but I have a feeling that they are probably in these other cages around us."I said motioning to the cages.

"Oh, well we better wake them up then. **HEY GUYS, WAKE UP!**" He shouted.

Seconds later we heard something moving and a voice we knew well rang out, "Will someone shut Kid Idiot up, I'm trying to sleep." Growled a voice to the right of us.

Artemis, she must be here too.

Another voice mumbled something in a language that sounded like Atlantian. That must have been Aqualad.

"Guys, wake up and prepare yourselves to be freaked out. We all somehow got turned into animals by Lex Luthor."

Way to let them down easy Wally.

"Kid Flash, this is no time to Joke, we must work together so we can escape." Said Aqualad, not believing him.

"Uh actually guys, Kid Flash is telling the truth, we did get turned into animals. Also Aqualad, unless you or Artemis still have opposable thumbs, then it's going to be practically impossible to escape from these cages." I said.

They were both quiet for a while after that.

"Wait," said Artemis, finally breaking the icy silence, "Seriously?"

I nodded, then realized that it was too dark for her to see me, so I just said, "Yes."

"How?" she asked, and I explained to everyone what had happened after we passed out.

"But what about Superboy and Miss. M?" she asked at the end.

"Uh, that one I don't know."

After that revelation sank in, we rode on in silence for what must have been hours, until finally, the truck slowed to a stop. We heard men outside talking, catching a few random phrases like 'another base camp' and 'give them to him once you get there.' We heard the driver get back into the truck and we traveled alone on the bumpy dirt road for a few more minutes until stopping again.

I knew we would be here for a while because the driver turned off the engine now, unlike last time where he had left it running, spewing noxious exhaust fumes into our cages in the back of the truck.

Suddenly, the tarp of the truck was untied and lifted, revealing that smirking scared face of one of the leagues greatest adversaries, Vandal Savage.

"Well…. hello Junior Justice League."

**Yeah, I know all of you probably can't stand me right now for that cliffhanger and I'm sorry, it just seemed like a really cool place to end the chapter.**

**Also, I need your help with something; I don't know what animals to make the rest of the team. Here's what I'm thinking so far, but I could use some help to decide: Artemis-Wolf, Aqualad-Seal (because he needs to go on land and in water, also who would hold the fish bowl when they escape?) Megan-Chameleon (natural camouflage), Superboy-I'm thinking either polar bear, or gorilla (so it would be ironic)**

**SO, please review and tell me who you think should be what. I value your suggestions ;)**


	3. Conner the monkey

**Chapter 3**

**Disclaimer: Seeing as Cartoon Network threw out Young Justice, I went to Cartoon Network and dug through their trash, and guess what, I found it! Ha Ha Ha! Young justice is miiiine!… oh, wait this is just a rotten banana. This means I DON'T really own Young Justice, how sad.**

**Author's Note: Thank all of you who reviewed, your suggestions definitely made my job a lot easier. And sorry if you think this chapter's bad, I think that I'm in the newbie stage where I constantly want to go to my room and cry, 'Why can't I write any good Fan fiction!' I seriously had major writer's block! so sorry for the wait to update, despite it being summer, I still have a lot of work homework packets and such to do, I'll try to update sooner.**

**Now, into the magical, nonsensical land of Fan fiction!**

**Somewhere in the watchtower.**

**Batman's P.O.V.**

8 hours, 46 minutes, and 33.3 seconds.

That was exactly how much time had passed since the team had arrived in Argentina, and they had still not reported back.

He tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, they were teenagers, and teenagers sometimes forgot things. Though he would give them a long lecture once they got back for not alerting the league how the mission went immediately.

If they ever got back…

NO, he could not allow himself to think like that, they knew what to do, he had trained them himself after all. But still, a feeling of dread wedged its self into his throat.

What If they had gotten hurt, killed even? It had been his idea to sent them on the mission, even when he **knew** that it wasn't just some random kidnapping, the men hired were too professional.

Come on Bruce, get a handle on yourself! He thought angrily, he needed to stop worrying, Batman wasn't even supposed to have emotions!

The whirring of the Zeta Beam interrupted his thoughts and he stopped his pacing.

'**Flash, A04' **the machine said in its monotone voice.

3 milliseconds later, the Fastest Man Alive had raced across the room and was beside the Dark Knight, rapidly asking questions that Batman didn't have time to answer.

"Haveyouheardfromthemyet? Ohmygoshyouhaven't,whyhaven'tyou!Didyousendanyonet ofindthemyet? Doyouevenknowwheretheyare?!"

"Barry, slow down." Batman answered, his surprisingly calm voice not even hinting at the emotional turmoil rushing around inside him.

"You're telling **me **to slow down! My nephew is out there somewhere, possibly kidnapped or worse, and you haven't even sent out a search team. I told you they weren't prepared enough to go on high stakes missions like this. Your son is on that team too, you know Bruce?!"

Even though that last remark hit him like a slap in the face, Bruce kept a straight face and tried to restrain himself from punching Barry through a wall for practically screaming out his secret identity, extremely thankful that there was no one else in the room with them.

"Barry, the team knows what to do in dangerous situations; we should remember that they are more than capable to handle themselves, like on the mission in Balyia." He immediately regretted mentioning Balyia the moment it came out of his mouth.

"Balyia! You think that being lost in the desert for over 24 hours and **losing their memories** defines as ok!?" shouted the enraged Speedster.

'**Superman, A01'**

The Zeta beam's sudden announcement momentarily interrupted the two heroes from their bickering.

"Flash, Batman, have you two got any news about what happened to the team?" asked the Man of Steel as he floated into the middle of the room.

"**See,** at least he cares about what happened to them!" the red clad speedster said, glaring at Batman accusingly.

"Um, was I interrupting something? I just came here to ask if Batman wanted me to go search for the team." said Superman, confused as to what the speedster had meant.

"I was originally going to ask Martian Manhunter to do the searching because of his camouflage, but he is off world, so you will have to do."

"Wait, so you actually had a plan the whole time?" asked the scarlet speedster, guilt gnawing at his insides.

"Of course I did, you just never gave me a chance to explain myself." Said the Bat in his regular monotone voice, turning and walking to the zeta tubes. He was going to the Bat Cave in order to search for clues as to why someone would want capture all the scientists, clues that might help him find out what happened to his son.

'**Batman, A02' **the teleporter announced.

And then, he was gone.

Somewhere just outside of La Pampa Argentina.

**Robin's P.O.V.**

Vandal Savage, yep this was definitely not going to end well.

Vandal Savage was one of the greatest enemies of the League for a reason; his enhanced strength and incredible cunning had sent almost all members of the Justice League to the hospital at least once. Batman also had his suspicions that vandal was working with other villains and plotting for something that definitely wasn't going to shower everyone with kittens and confetti, if you know what I mean.

So just the thought of him being involved in this whole thing sent shivers down my spine.

Vandal turned to a guard who stood next to him, his pale scars illuminated in the moonlight, "You know what to do." He said in a cold voice, "And make sure to get the other two."

The other two? He had to mean Megan and Superboy!

Relief flooded through me as I realized that this meant they weren't taken somewhere else or worse. The relief turned to frozen fear as the rest of what Savage had said clicked in my brain. What were they going to do with us now?

Vandal walked away out of my line of sight, the guard climbed into the truck and proceeded to lift two of the cages and place them on the forest floor. One of those cages contained a cheetah-Wally, but the other one contained a silvery and blonde furred wolf.

Artemis?!

I hadn't thought to look for her or Kaldur once Vandal had pulled up the tarp, and I could see fairly well under the light of the full moon.

The guard once again climbed into the truck and removed the last cages, mine and one that appeared to hold a light brown harbor seal that I assumed to be Kaldur.

Wow, did the villains choose what animals we would be turned into, or was all of this just naturally ironic?

Once our cages were placed on the ground outside, I could see we had stopped at what looked like an large, normal campground, that is if normal camp grounds included several hundred armed guards, some armed with what even looked like bazookas.

Once again, the amount of time and money that must have been spent on this was not lost on me. This was a lot bigger than just some crazy scientist who liked turning people into animals. Something much bigger was at play here.

I looked around at my teammates who were all staring at each other in shock.

"Well hi guys, fancy seeing you here?" I said, breaking the silence while trying to flash my signature grin. Wait... birds couldn't smile could they?

"You seem surprisingly upbeat, despite all that's happened to us." Responded Artemis, slightly ticked off at my happiness.

"Awww come on Arty, I'm just trying to lighten the mood."

The guard who had brought us out of the truck waved to some other guards and yelled to them that he needed help to bring all of us to the base.

What base? I looked around once more, seeing only the military tents.

The guard and two others picked up our cages and walked us to the middle of the camp where there appeared to be a cellar door.

The base they were talking about must have been underground I realized, and also noticing that the door didn't look new, which meant it had not been built recently. This project must have been going on for years, yet the league only caught wind of it weeks ago.

"Oh, **please** tell me we are not going down there." Said Artemis, the distain apparent in her voice.

"Artemis, is that you?" shouted a voice somewhere within the mess of soldiers and tents behind us.

I recognized that voice, "Megan?" I shouted back over the deafening roar of 6 or 7 military trucks starting up.

We watched as several soldiers maneuvered a large grey truck through the maze of tents and parked it beside us. The drivers climbed out, went to the back, and untied the tarp, revealing 2 animals in cages.

One of them contained what looked to be a chameleon, probably Megan, and the other, a small monkey.

There is no way in heck that that could be Connor, I thought to myself, the irony of it was just too impossible.

Then again, **I was **turned into a robin. Which meant that there was a possibility, although small, that the fuzzy little creature being set down in front of us, could truly **be** Superboy.

"Uh, supey, is that you?" Wally asked tentatively.

The creature turned to us and glared.

Oh my gosh, it really was him!

Seriously, all of this was so ironic; it was almost as if we were in one of those crazy fanfictions!

Wally started making snickering sounds, but was silenced by a look that almost rivaled the bat glare.

"So you guys got turned into animals as well." Said Megan, her always cheery voice seeming extremely out of place in her current reptilian body.

"Yes", answered Aqualad, "And I take it that your powers aren't working as well, seeing as you haven't escaped yet."

It hadn't even occurred to me that the rest of the team could have lost their powers after being transformed. Why hadn't I thought of that before?

"Yes, and so has Superboy." she replied.

That was probably why he was so mad (besides the fact that he had recently been turned into his least favorite animal.) To have powers that rivaled superman's and then having them suddenly taken away, no wonder he looked like he wanted to murder everyone within a 15 mile radius.

"So that's it then? None of you have your powers, and Rob and I don't have our weapons, we're all basically defenseless now." Artemis concluded, resignation clear in her voice.

She was right; we had no way of getting out of this mess ourselves. We all just had to cross our 'not fingers', and hope that the League would find us soon.

A guard with a darker colored armor than the others, most likely of higher rank, walked up to the cellar door, took off his gloves, and pressed his hand to the door. It started to glow and a low hum made the earth around up tremble.

Finger print recognition. Yep, there was a depressingly low chance of us getting out now, well at least until I got my wrist computer and hands back.

The door swung open and guard picked up my cage. He quickly motioned to the others to do the same.

"Everyone stay whelmed!" I shouted out quickly, as the guard holding me shook the cage violently and chuckled as I stumbled and fell.

The rest of the team's cages were picked up, and one by one we descended down the cellar stair well into the darkness.

**HA HA HA Cliffhanger!**

**Sorry about that, I didn't want to keep ya'll waiting forever. **

**I'll try to update at least once a week, but I have family staying at my house, and we take them on tours practically every day! And I honestly thought that summer would be no work and all play, turns out I was wrong, very wrong!**

**Thank all of you again for reviewing and giving me your suggestions for animals (especially the ones for Conner) And thank you all for actually bothering to read this.**

**Press the review button please!**


	4. escapewell, almost

**Chapter 4**

**Disclaimer: The best things in life are free, unfortunately when I asked the owners of Cartoon Network if I could own young justice for free, they said, and I quote: "Ha Ha Ha- NO!", then they had security escort me from the premises. And that is why cartoon network now holds a restraining order against me.**

**Thank all of you who reviewed and, sorry If the animal choices I made angered you, I just did what I thought was best. Also in the last chapter, there was meant to be a break line when batman exited the watchtower, I guess that spell-check took it away.**

**Oh and to those who were wondering, when the team got turned into animals, they didn't get the advances that the cobra venom enhanced animals got. This story is about the team getting turned into normal animals, no super strength included – Well, at least not yet…. ;)**

**Enjoy the story.**

**Robin's P.O.V**

Why do all super villains feel the need to make all of their secret lairs as creepy as possible?

I mean seriously, is there some Villain's 'Guide to Creepy Lairs' Handbook where it specifies that you **must **have a creepy lair if you are to be deemed a Super Villain? Well there probably isn't, but it sure seemed like there was, seeing as the secret base we had just been carried into, seemed to be just as unsettling as some of the Joker's.

Well that was a bit of exaggeration, because this one certainly didn't have life sized robotic puppets, or a mine field of explosive playing cards, but this was still pretty high on the creep-o-meter, not really because of how it looked all together, but because of what we saw inside.

The first hallway we walked down was completely dark and empty, if you didn't count the 15 or so open crates stacked with pile upon pile of blue vials that glowed in the dark.

The exact same vials that we had found earlier in the military compound.

The same vials that I had strongly suspected had turned us into the animals we were now.

We turned around a corner into a different hall that was stacked high with even more crates than the last one we were in. I counted at least fifty by the time we had rounded yet another corner into yet another, even larger hall.

And another, and another, and another, each with even more crates than the last. The sheer enormity of the base completely astounded me. All of the vials of serum we had seen at the other base were nothing in comparison to all that was stored here.

At the old base there was at best, one hundred crates of serum, most of them half empty, yet here, there appeared to be at least a thousand, not counting the many trucks that probably carried 70 or 80 crates each.

A chilling shiver ran up my spine, what were they planning to do with all that serum?

Suddenly, we stopped halfway along one of the hallways next to a door marked with a sign that said 'Lab Tests in Progress, Authorized Personnel Only'. The lead guard took a keycard out of his front pocket and swiped it against a scanner on the door.

"Access Granted"

The door swung open and we walked inside.

The room was relatively large and almost all of the walls were covered ceiling to floor with hastily made notes and papers, crowded with complex writing and graphs that were illuminated by a single bare light on the ceiling. This might have been where the other Star Labs Scientists were held and forced to work before they were, you know, not really people anymore.

They walked us into the middle of the room and set our cages down. One of the guards took out a pair of keys from his breast pocket and waved them in front of Aqualad's cage just to taunt him. Aqualad never fell for the trick but Artemis let out a low growl at the man.

"We're running out of time, and you know how the boss gets when we're late." Said one of the guards, looking at his wrist watch. The man with the keys waved them in front of Aqualad's cage once more and then tossed them somewhere into the corners of the room. The men then gave us knowing smirks and turned to walk out the door.

"Hey, where are you guys going?" shouted Kid Flash, "What's going to happen to us?!"

"In case you haven't noticed Fur Face, they can't understand a word we're saying." said Artemis matter-a-factly, just as the last guard slipped out the door.

Our predicament was bad, I knew that. But that didn't mean I was just going to sit here and let Luthor and Vandal get away with whatever they were planning to do to us.

I quickly scanned the locks on all of our cages. Conner, Wally, Artemis, and Aqualad all had locks on their cages, but Megan and I didn't, we just had simple slide locked cage doors. Superboy still had almost normal fingers as a monkey, and could possibly open our cage doors.

"Hey Superboy, do you think that you would be able to open these locks if you were close enough?"

Hearing his name woke Superboy out of his deep thoughts. "Wait, what?" he asked, a bit confused.

"I said, do you think that you would be able to open these locks if you were close enough to reach our cages" I repeated.

"Uh. Yeah I guess so, but how am I supposed to get over there?"

He was right, there was at least 10 feet of floor between us.

"Well….. Now is the perfect time for someone else to come up with a better plan."

"I got it, I'm going to bust us out of here," said Wally, "Prepare to be amazed." He took a few steps back since his cage was the largest, and ran….

Face first into the bars.

"Crash!" the noise echoed through the room making all of us flinch.

Wally stumbled about in his cage for a few seconds, then collapsed. "Well, I'm out of Ideas." He admitted, depression seeping into his voice.

"Wait guys, maybe it did work." I said, a light bulb going off in my head.

My suggestion was met with a chorus of 'huh?'s' and 'what?'s

The look of horror on Kid Flash's face made it clear that he thought that I just wanted him to get hurt again.

"Guys, that's not what I meant. Look at His cage; he managed to move it almost a foot forward." I explained.

They all looked to where I was motioning with my head, and saw that I was right. Wally's cage had indeed moved forward almost a foot, and if it had moved just 3 or 4 more inches, it would have slammed into the cage in front of it, which happened to be Superboy's.

"KF, I know that it hurt, but if you keep on doing that, you'll be able to move Superboy's cage." I told him.

And as much as Wally resented the plan, he agreed to go along with it for the sake of the mission.

He continued ramming the cage with his body and actually succeeded to move Superboy into reach of my cage's lock.

"Uggh, almost got it…YES!" he shouted, finally opening the lock and letting me out.

I hopped out of my cage and on to the cool tiled floor of the room.

Stage one of our escape plan was complete, now to find a way to free the others.

**The Batcave**

**Batman's P.O.V**

Batman was worried.

And when Batman was worried, there wasn't a reason in the world why you shouldn't be absolutely terrified.

The Batman persona was created to inspire fear into the hearts of even the most hardened criminals, and to this day no criminal had ever been able to stare down the Bat without nearly wetting their pants to some extent.

Everyone just assumed that The Dark Knight was fearless; after all, he fought psychos and nutcases practically every day of the week. And Bruce had actually thought of himself that way for a while ever since taking on the identity of Batman, but as it turned out, the dark knight did have a weakness. And that Achilles' heel had walked into his life about four years ago, in the form of a barely 9 year old child, who had changed his life forever.

That child's name was Richard John Grayson.

Bruce had raised him, trained him to control his anger; he had wanted to give the boy the chance he never had. The chance to change his life early on and to not spend his life as obsessed with justice and vengeance as Bruce himself had been. And even though he had sworn he wouldn't, Bruce had become attached.

Which, of course led to many nights like this one, where he was constantly on edge and cursing himself for ever letting his ward live this kind of life?

Practically every other night, as Batman and Robin, they would fight psychopaths and murderers, and more often than not, Richard would walk away injured while he would be perfectly fine. He was only 13 for Christ's sake!

"Master Bruce!" shouted a loud voice from behind him, "I know what you are thinking, so stop it this very instant! Every time something like this happens, I find you down here sulking, and blaming yourself for something that is certainly not your fault. With all due respect, sitting around in this dark and depressing cave, moping around will not help you or Master Richard."

The English butler stepped out from behind the large computer that Bruce had been staring at for a number of hours.

Bruce sighed; Alfred was right, as always,

"I know," Bruce replied, "I just can't help but feel that it's always my fault for dragging him into these things. Sometimes I forget that he's only a child."

"So do I Master Bruce, so do I."

"Superman to Batcave. Come in Batcave."

Bruce and Alfred looked up at the computer to see Superman's face fill up the many screens of the Bat Computer.

"Batman here, have you found them yet?" The Dark Knight asked while ushering Alfred out of the room, anxious for any news on his son.

The man of steel suddenly glanced down, not wanting to see Bruce's reaction to what he was about to tell him.

"Um… well actually… about that, we couldn't find the team, and the military encampment where we sent them has been abandoned."

Bruce's hands tightened their grip on his armchair as he tried to keep his composure, even though the news was a confirmation of his worst fears.

"And we... um, found something else." This time it was Barry speaking, his voice shaking a little, because he had apparently just been shoved in front of the screen to deliver this last bit of information.

"We found this in one of the buildings."He said nervously, and held a mask up to the screen.

Robin's mask.

The arms of the chair shattered.

Flash let out a squeak and hid behind Superman, who looked as if he would rather have kryptonite shoved down his throat rather than face an angry Batman.

"Don't worry, well keep searching, we won't leave until we find them." Said superman, trying to find some way to appease the Bat before something other than the arm chair got broken.

"You'd better stay there." He growled, noticing how they flinched at his every word.

"Batman out." He said, and closed the link before either could say anything else.

He let out a deep breath and leaned back in his chair trying to stay calm.

At this point Alfred had reentered the Batcave and stared at the remains of the arm chair as he put together what must have happened in his head.

"Well sir, it looks like you certainly have your work cut out for you. Oh, and shall I call the chair company and have them deliver 3 **more** chairs Sir?" The butler said, breaking the silence and walking back up the stairs into Wayne Manner.

"Probably more than three."

Something was telling him, Some Bat-sense or otherwise, that this whole fiasco was going to last awhile.

And one thing was certain; he was definitely going to need more than 3 chairs to get through it all.

**A certain Bird Wonder's P.O.V**

"Almost…..Almost…..Yes! Success!" I whisper-shouted, finally managing to grip the key ring with my beak. I then tried-and failed to glide gracefully to the floor from the tall pile of boxes I was standing on, succeeding in landing in a crumpled heap of bird and keys on the floor.

Man, flying was hard.

I had been searching around the room for keys to the other's cages to no avail for almost 40 minutes, and I was just about to give up when Artemis spotted something shiny in the right corner of the room and it just so happened to be the keys we were looking for.

Now the only thing left was to free my friends.

I went to Conner's cage first, seeing as he would be the only one able to actually use the keys. Although he actually still had almost human fingers(though a bit more hairy), it took over a minute and a half for him to free himself, and by that time I had also managed to free Megan. Because for some reason unknown to me, opening a slide lock cage door was extremely easier than picking keys up off of a flat surface.

"Me first, me first!" shouted Kid Flash, eager to get out of his cage that now sported many cat-shaped indents in its walls.

"Keep it down Kid Mouth, they might hear us." Snapped Artemis.

She was right, although no guards would be able to make out any words that we said, they still might come into the room to investigate what had made the sound, and that would take away almost all chance of us escaping. Thankfully nothing like that had happened so far, but we weren't about to take any chances.

"Sheesh Artemis, calm down. No one has even walked down this hallway since we got here. Nobody's going to hear us." Wally said in a purposefully annoying and loud voice, as Conner worked on unlocking his cage.

And, as luck would have it someone did hear him, and it wasn't a guard.

…..

**Normal P.O.V**

The following events all happened in a matter of seconds.

The door burst open and Sportsmaster stepped inside, followed closely by a small troupe of guards with their guns drawn. The assassin's eyes acessed the whole situation while we all stood there frozen like deer in headlights.

Getting over his shock, he quickly yelled, "Don't let them get away!" at the precise moment that Superboy finished unlocking Kid Flash's door and the Speedster jumped out and immediately ran at Sportsmaster.

99.5% of people would either scream or faint if they saw a large predator-such as a cheetah jump, claws and fangs bared, at them.

Unfortunately for the team, Sportsmaster and his guards were all in the other .5% - That is excluding one unlucky guard whose name was Larry, who actually did faint, most likely due to a traumatic memory including the extremely unlikely meeting of a tiger who had escaped from a zoo and a 7 year old Larry. To put it simply, poor Larry never got over that particular experience.

Anyhow, all of the guards (excluding Larry of course) were ready for Wally, and tazered him at such a velocity that it would have been impossible for anyone to not drop to the floor unconscious and twitching, like Wally did just now.

The guards (again minus Larry) swarmed the room and surrounded the team, readying their tazers for another possible attack.

Half of the men lunged foreword and grabbed Aqualad and Artemis's cages, lifting them off the ground, as Aqualad shouted quickly, " Robin, maneuver 5B, take Megan and Superboy, You know what to do."

Robin's eyes widened as he realized what his friend had said.

"We won't leave you guys here!" Robin yelled, trying to dodge the men grabbing for him and Megan.

"It is our only hope!" the Atlantean yelled back.

Kaldur was telling the truth, Robin knew that, but he knew that he would never forget what he was about to do.

"Miss Martian, Superboy, follow me!" he yelled and made a mad dash for the door, barely avoiding guard's tazers and jumping over the unconscious Larry (whose body had, in a stroke of random luck, kept the door from slamming closed immediately) with two of his teammates reluctantly following him into the hallway.

Robin paused only for a second to check for anywhere to hide and he spotted the perfect place, an old air vent that's cover must have been taken recently off for cleaning.

And with not a second to spare, the 3 small animals, a monkey, a chameleon that was being carried by the monkey, and a small bird, dove headfirst into the open air vent, which proved to be a huge mistake, seeing as the air vent only went on at that height for about a foot, before dropping 7 and a half feet straight down before flattening out once again.

The young heroes moaned and groaned, getting dazedly up and looking around at their surroundings.

"Well this sucks." said Conner, getting straight to the point, "What do we do now?"

He and Megan turned to look at Robin.

"Actually, I have no idea; I was just kind of "winging it."

"Robin now is probably the worst possible time for you to make a joke."

"Yeah, I know. But we should probably get a move on, were just giving the guards more time to come up with a plan."

Robin was right; they could all hear the guards cursing as they tried to find some way into the vent.

"Let's Go."

The animals turned and began the long trip through the air vents, all the while trying not to think of the many ways that they could all soon meet their end.

**Thank all of you for actually bothering to read this story, I only have a vague outline in my head of what will happen next, so I'm pretty much just "winging it" as I go.**

**Also, I must once again call upon the magical readers of fanfictions to aid me in my story; I am in need of someone's OC animal who Rob, Conner, and Megan will meet during their escape. This animal must either be a scientist or someone who just stumbled upon their base and got used as a test subject or something like that. This animal must also be a relatively weak animal, like a domesticated cat or a pig or something (which sadly means no wolves either) this may all sound weird, but trust me it will work out in the end….probably.**

**Please review, even if you think that this story is not even mildly amusing, review because it will give me enough willpower to finally beat Green Lantern in that chess match, and then I will finally be able to pay back Superman that 5000 dollars I owe him. **

**A word to the wise, never bet that Superman cannot punch a hole through the moon, not only will you owe him a lot of money, but the moon will also have a Superman's fist shaped hole in it. - a message from the 'Don't Bet Against Superman Organization', Helping children realize that betting against Superman is a very foolish thing to do. Founded about 15 seconds ago by Dragonfire-Wolfgirl**

**PLEASE REVIEW!**


	5. And the plot thickens

**Chapter 5**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Young Justice, this would be called 'Plans for Future Episodes' rather than FanFiction, heavy on the 'Fan'.**

**Author's note: Truthfully, I didn't expect that I would get more than 2 OC's, well guess what, I was wrong. 'GHASP!' And Since I don't want to be a mean person and leave anyone out, I've decided to include one OC inspired character from each person who sent in one; sorry I can't do all of them. And I am super sorry if your OC doesn't have many, if any, lines. If all of them had lots of lines, 95% of this chapter would be them talking because there are soo many. P.S, If I happened to leave anyone out, trust me, I know how much you hate an author if they don't take your suggestion.**

**Also I am soooo sorry for taking so long to update, I was halfway done with this chapter when school started and I haven't been able to add more than 3 words for the past few weeks, thanks to the horror that is homework. Seriously, they should make it illegal to give us so many projects and papers in the first few weeks, I mean we all have lives outside of school and most of my teachers just don't seem to get that.**

**Oh and on a lighter tone, whoever told me to un-center the text was smart, it looks a lot better now. And you may decide for yourself which species of Robin that Robin is, the European ones are extremely cute and that is most likely the kind of Robin that he was turned into, though I had originally pictured him being an American one.**

**AnYwHoO, thanks for reading and enjoy the story!**

**Normal P.O.V**

"What do you mean that was our only option!" Wally yelled at Kaldur. Wally actually could sort of understand why he had done it, but he felt that there were a whole bunch of other perfectly reasonable things he could have done instead.

Wally's Cage swung a bit when they turned another corner and the spotted cat struggled to stay on his feet. After all, getting tazered by ten other men at the same time is a hard thing to simply shrug off.

After the guards Sportsmaster had spent at least an hour trying-and failing to find some way to follow the rest of the team into the air vents (Sportsmaster, like a true criminal, mad his henchmen do all the hard work), had radioed in what had happened. From what the team had heard, he had placed guards stationed at every air vent exit, so it seemed to them that their friends had little to no chance of escape. Sportsmaster had then ordered the guards that the plan would go ahead as planned.

"Kid, I understand why you are angry at my decision, but as leader, I felt that if the rest of our team escaped they would have a chance at contacting the league and getting us rescued." Aqualad said calmly trying to get the angry cat to calm down.

Wally took a deep breath, "Alright, let's just say that if they somehow managed to contact the league, and they came here, they wouldn't even know that it was us!"His voice returning to a shout.

"As much as I hate to admit it, Baywatch is right. Even if the League did manage to find us, which is extremely unlikely as it is, they wouldn't find the team, they would just find a group of random animals. If ya don't remember Kal, we can't speak English anymore." Artemis said finishing with a growl as she realized for herself how truly hopeless their whole situation was.

"Perhaps I did not think my decision through enough." Kaldur quietly admitted, looking at the floor of his cage.

"Ya think?" Artemis snapped as the guards paused for a moment outside what looked like a vault to a safe.

Sportsmaster removed a keycard from his pocket and placed it against a scanner. "**Access Granted" **The door swung open to reveal what must have been a holding cell for prisoners. Right now the room was being used for relatively the same purpose, though instead of storing human prisoners, it stored animal ones.

Much like some of the rooms at the other base, this one was filled with 20 or so animals in cages who were all barking, tweeting, and whatever noise a turtle makes-ing.

Except this time, they could understand what they were saying.

"Daddy, I want to go home." Said a small chipmunk in a cage to the left of the team.

"I know honey, I know, this will all be over soon." Next to the chipmunk's cage was a slightly larger one, in which resided a light brown mongoose who was doing the talking, and in the corner of the cage, sat an oddly colored gecko with red, black, and blue stripes running down it's back.

"Can you idiots just be quiet! I can't even hear myself think." This voice came from a jet black horse in the corner of the room who glared at just about anything that moved.

"It's not good to say bad words." said a small Labrador who for some reason had been put into a bird cage rather than a normal dog cage. The rest of the conversations were too hard to discern through all of the racket.

To say the least, the team was shocked. They had imagined that only them and the star labs scientists had been used as test subjects for the serum. But judging by the sounds of the voices around them, there was an array of adults, teenagers, and small children.

Sportsmaster put the team down in the right corner of the room, next to a bright ginger, almost red tom cat, who for some reason was stumbling around in a circle, mumbling an incoherent tune. And green and blue eyed white cat who sat there silently, watching them all.

"We'll be back for you three in a couple hours, and if you decide to try anything, we'll know." The team turned to look once again at Sportsmaster who was point to two security cameras on the sides of the room. With that last warning, the assassin turned and strode out of the room, followed closely by his posse of guards, the last one slamming the door closed with a "Thunk!"

"Um…excuse me," said a small voice belonging to a tiny tan and brown guinea pig, "Who are you?"

Up until she had spoken, the team hadn't even noticed that as soon as Sportsmaster left, the room had fallen silent and all eyes had immediately locked on the newcomers.

"Yeah," said another voice, this time coming from a pure black cat with a sly calculating voice, "Why do you three get all of the special attention?"

There was a chorus of agreement all around the room, not counting of course, the bright colored tom cat, who let out a confused, "Cheezeburger?"

"Well," started Kaldur, "I suppose that introductions are necessary. I am Aqualad, and these are my friends Kid Flash and Artemis."

And so Aqualad began to tell the waiting animals of what had happened to him and his team….

Although no one really believed them.

…

**Robin's P.O.V**

"So we have basically no idea where we're going?" asked Superboy.

"Yep." I answered in a false upbeat tone.

"And there is a huge chance were are walking into a huge trap?"

"Pretty much."

"Just checking."

We had been walking for what seemed like hours, but had yet to find somewhere to get out of the air ducts. We had many close calls in the past few hours, seeing as every time we found an exit duct, it would have 2 or 3 guards stationed around it.

So, to sum it all up, every extra minute we spent in here, trying to find a way out, our actual chance of escape went down about 10%. I estimate we are currently somewhere in the -300's.

As we turned and rounded about the thousandth corner, I heard something. I stopped and motioned for the others to do the same.

"Did you hear that?" I asked, looking specifically at Superboy.

"No Super-hearing, remember?" replied the grumpy clone.

Oh, right.

And before I had time to contemplate what our next move would be, the sound repeated its self.

"H-Help us."

Megan and Superboy had tensed up and looked around for the source, now hearing the voice for the first time.

"It came from that direction." I said motioning to the right of us and we took the next right turn, breaking out of our right-left pattern of choosing for the first time.

The sight that met us as we turned the corner was a stroke of luck, there was an exit from the air ducts, a grate, and it was wide open.

Maybe one of the guards had tried to crawl up into the ducts but failed and left it open, maybe it was being cleaned….or maybe it was a trap. I motioned to the others to stay still while I checked it out and tread as silently as I could to the open grate, and then peeked inside.

The room was small; in fact it looked more like a janitor's closet than a room. Wait, did that mean that there were such things as evil janitors? 'Off topic' I consciously reminded myself and continued searching the room, there were no guards which was great, most likely due to the small amount of elbow room. Maybe Sportsmaster had missed the room when he was searching for places where they could have exited the air vent, or maybe he had men posted just outside the door ready to capture us as soon as we left.

The room was stuffed with brooms and mops and anything else an evil janitor might need, but I had yet to find the source of the voice. I looked back at Conner and Megan and nodded: the signal that meant, 'it's ok to come out' and 'we're probably not going to be attacked by crazy ninja assassins if we come into this room, please note that I said 'probably.'

Once we had all gathered around the opening, Megan cautiously whispered in, "Um, hello is anybody in here?"

The response was immediate, something in the corner of the room started moving and I saw that what I had previously mistaken for a pile of dirty towels was actually a cage covered by a mess of filthy rags.

"Hello, help us, please!" came a desperate shout from the cage, its occupant obviously now realizing that they actually had some hope of being rescued.

I took a deep breath and jumped.

The nearest crate was no more than 3 feet down, but I felt like I had just jumped off the empire state building. I tried to use my useless wings to slow me down, but it was no use.

"Crash!"

I heard Megan and Superboy wince from above and had a feeling that I had probably broken a rib or two.

"I'm good." I called up to quell my fears, the last thing I wanted was for Meagan to start apologizing, because other than fire, the only thing that hurt the Martian more than fire was guilt.

I surveyed the room from my new viewpoint to try to find the least self injuring way to the floor and finally settled on a route of oily buckets and broken brooms that lead straight to the hidden cage at the end of the room.

The first thing I noticed as I made my way to the cage was the whimpering. When I had been farther away I had thought that there had been only one creature in the cage, but the closer I came, the more I realized that there were at least two distinct female voices, the one who was whimpering, and whoever was comforting her.

I finally reached the cage and began to remove the rags piled haphazardly over it, revealing two creatures that had obviously been through a lot during their time in this underground base that was seeming more and more like a dungeon.

One of the creatures was obviously a cat, with black and ginger fur that appeared to have been lightly singed in a fire. The other was what appeared to be a porcupine, some of her quills broken who was now cowering in the corner of the cage, too scared to even face in my direction.

"Who-who are you?" asked the cat who was trying at the sometime to coax the porcupine out of the corner.

"Well, my name's Robin, I work with Batman, you may have heard of me. What's your name?" I replied, trying to the 'calm and focused' face that I usually reserved for people who had just survived being attacked by Joker or Two-Face and were experiencing some emotional trauma.

It wasn't working.

I had no idea what these two had been through, but it must have pretty bad judging that the porcupine had curled up completely into a ball and didn't look like she was coming out any time soon. Thankfully the cat was cooperating; although she took a step back when I bent down to inspect the lock, which thankfully was something I was probably going to be able to open with a beak.

"Um- well….. My name's Arianna, and this," she said motioning to the ball of spikes in the corner of the cage, "is Emily." The creature quivered at the use of its name.

"Well," I said, finally succeeding in opening the lock, "As much as I'd love to chat with you, I think it's about time we got out of-"

A loud "Clang!" echoed through the tiny room as the door was suddenly shoved off its hinges and into the wall, by someone who obviously had missed having his life-essential coffee this morning.

Sportsmaster had found us, and this time, he was **not **going to let us get away.

**Dun-dun-dun!**

**I am super sorry for not updating sooner; I literally forgot that this story even existed for a few weeks. I wonder what they will do to try to get away. No….seriously I have only a super vague idea of what happens next and I was actually planning to make this chapter longer, but that would mean that you would have to wait another few weeks for just a few hundred words. **

**I really hope that I did a good job of representing your OC's and seriously, if I forgot your character, leave a review saying that and I will try my absolute hardest to include you in the next chapter. Oh, and since there is a very low chance of me actually being able to post before Halloween ( if you don't know what it is, look it up) And I would just like to say, **

_** ! **_

**(Oh, and P.S, I am going to go as a satyr, because I will never be too old for free candy, NEVERRRRR!)**

**Please review. -dragonfire-wolfgirl**


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